by Ruth Behar
When I return to the living room, it’s dark outside but no one is in a rush.
“Remember how we sat on the balcony at night listening to the palm trees sway in the breeze?” Gladys says.
Mami replies, “How can I forget? Oh, Cuba, our beloved Cuba.”
“We can’t keep looking back,” Baba whispers.
“It’s all gone now, anyway,” Papi says, still puffing on his cigar.
Oscar puffs on his cigar too. “The important thing is we’re here and we’ll always be friends.” He notices Izzie and me sitting there quietly. “You’ve both behaved very well. Here’s some M&M’s for you!” And he gives us each a packet. Yippee!
Izzie and I tear into the M&M’s and finish them in no time. No one scolds us; no one seems to mind.
Then our visit starts coming to an end, our special day about to be over.
“¡Vamos!” Papi orders. “Tomorrow is Monday. We all have to get up early.”
Tomorrow Izzie and I will be in school. It will be my first day in the smart class!
We make our way slowly to the door.
“Bye, Gladys! Bye, Oscar. ¡Gracias!”
“Come back and see us again soon,” Gladys calls out.
“We will,” Mami says, waving happily and throwing her old friend a kiss.
I feel so happy and grown-up wearing my go-go boots.
I bring my lips to the palm of my hand, blowing my kiss into the night air of Staten Island, hoping the wind will carry it across the hills and plains of the vast land of America that gave Papi the blue Oldsmobile of his dreams.
lucky
I lean against Baba’s shoulder in the backseat of the car and she says, “Lie down, be comfortable, shayna maideleh.” I feel loved like baby Rosa when I sink into her lap and she uses those sugar words that mean “beautiful girl” in Yiddish.
I curl my legs under me so as not to crowd Izzie and peer up at the roof of the car. The reflections of the headlights and taillights move in different directions. I am lulled to sleep by the swooshing sound of the car sailing down the highway, the ride so smooth, like Baba said. I’m floating along on a calm ocean. Words drift past me, Baba and Mami talking about baby Rosa.
Then everything goes still. There’s no swoosh. There are no voices. I open my eyes. My head isn’t on Baba’s lap anymore. Baba is gone. Izzie is gone. Mami and Papi are gone. I am all by myself in the car.
Where am I?
Where is everyone?
I try to get up, but I’m only wearing one go-go boot. I’ve lost the boot on my left leg. And my right leg is twisted weirdly. I can’t move it. I don’t think it’s my leg. It’s someone else’s leg.
Am I dreaming?
I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep. But I can’t sleep because my leg hurts like nothing ever hurt before.
Out of the darkness a man appears. He looks in through the broken windows, struggles with the lock on the back door, and finally flings it open.
Who is this man? Blood is dripping from the top of his head.
It’s Papi!
“Papi! Papi! Why did you all leave me? Papi, I lost one of my boots. Can we go look for it?”
“Later. The car might catch fire.”
He bends and picks me up, trying to cradle my right leg in the crook of his arm. But the leg flops down like the legs of my old rag doll from Cuba.
“Stop, Papi! It hurts!”
“Calma, calma.”
Papi keeps walking and when we get to the edge of the highway he lays me down on the ground. Mami is there with Baba. They are holding hands and crying like little girls. Papi looks up at the sky and shouts, “¡Dios mío! Why? Why? Why?”
Izzie’s head is bleeding like Papi’s, but he’s not in any pain. Izzie thinks we’re having an adventure. He kneels next to me and says, “I saw it! I saw a car flip the divider! It turned into a torpedo! I saw it crash into the car in front of us! Then we crashed into them. Then a bunch of cars crashed into us! Bam, bam, bam.” Izzie waits for me to say something. I’m quiet, so he continues, “It was like a movie!”
It’s stupid but I feel jealous of Izzie. Why did I have to fall asleep?
From somewhere in the darkness, beyond where I can see, a woman moans.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh . . .”
The night is black and blue and purple like an ugly bruise.
Who will help us? Who will take us home?
In the distance, I hear a siren. The wail grows louder and louder as the ambulance comes closer. Finally the ambulance stops right next to us.
Two men jump out and take a quick look at all of us.
“Aquí, aquí,” I hear Papi say. “Mi hija,” he stammers.
The woman moans again. “Oh, oh, oh, oh . . .”
The men rush over to where the woman is.
“She’s breathing,” one man says. “But she’s tangled up in metal. This is going to take a while. Put a splint on that girl. Take her and her family to the hospital. See if any of them can speak English.”
I want to shout, “I speak English!” But I’ve forgotten how to talk.
The man who is supposed to attend to me says, “We need another ambulance. And we need a funeral car. Why aren’t the cops here by now? There’s a bunch of dead people.”
Dead people?
He comes over to me and bends down to look at my leg. He smells like a White Castle hamburger with shiny onions on top.
“Listen, kid. Try not to move, okay? You understand?”
He brings out a slab of wood from the ambulance. Then he lifts my leg and uses thick tape to strap it down.
It hurts like crazy. I can’t hold back the tears.
“Come on, kid, be brave.”
He brings out a stretcher and sets me down on it.
“Are you all right? Can you help?” he asks Papi.
“Yes, sir. This is nothing,” Papi says and he points to his bloody head.
He and Papi carry me to the ambulance. The man tells Papi to sit with him in the front. Mami and Baba follow us with Izzie. They cram in around me in the back of the ambulance.
Now Izzie is exhausted. He says to Mami, “Are we going home?”
That only makes her cry all over again.
The siren blares as the man takes us away in the ambulance.
The darkness of the night creeps into my heart. I think about how Papi should have listened to Mami and not bought the blue Oldsmobile.
I want to yell, “It’s your fault, Papi, all your fault!”
But I just lie there and listen to Mami repeat over and over, “Why didn’t we stay in Cuba? Why didn’t we stay in Cuba? Why didn’t we stay in Cuba?”
At the hospital, people moan and cry. There are so many of them, everyone lined up on stretchers, one after another. No one pays any attention to their moans or their cries.
I lie on a stretcher moaning and crying too.
Mami and Baba and Izzie and Papi stand around me like bowling pins about to topple over. There’s no place for them to sit.
A nurse comes over in her squeaky nurse shoes.
“You can’t all be here in the emergency room. It’s too crowded. Go to the waiting room. I’ll keep you informed of the girl’s progress.”
They’re half asleep and don’t move right away.
The nurse raises her voice. “Don’t you people understand English?”
She shoos them out the door like pesky flies.
I am left alone with all the miserable people.
Then there’s a big commotion.
“Out of the way! Out of the way! This is urgent!”
They wheel in a woman on a stretcher, her arms and legs limp, her eyes open too wide.
A doctor in a white coat runs toward her and bumps into my stretcher.
“It hurts, it hurt
s,” I stammer as loud as I can to get his attention.
“Quiet, kid,” he says to me. “You’ve just got a broken leg. You’re lucky. This woman here, she was in the car in front of you. She’ll probably never walk again. We think she is paralyzed for life.”
Another doctor in a white coat finally comes and gives me an injection and I fall asleep. When I wake up, I don’t know what day it is. I’m in a hospital bed and my right leg hangs from a strap tied to the ceiling.
A nurse comes in. She snips off my underwear with a huge pair of scissors and throws the pieces in the trash. She leaves me wearing only a hospital gown.
“Where are my go-go boots?”
“Gone,” the nurse replies. “You can’t wear them anyway.”
“What do I do if I have to go to the bathroom?”
“Call me when you need the bedpan,” she says. “Press the button before you have to go, not after you wet the bed. I only change the sheets once a day.”
“Where are my mami and papi?” I ask her.
“They had to go,” she says. “Now try to sleep.”
After she leaves, I stare at the clock, trying to make the time go faster. I can’t believe I have been abandoned, left all alone in the world. I keep repeating words to myself until they become a song in my head:
No one loves me
not even my mother
not even my father
not even my brother
Nadie me quiere a mí . . .
I’ve given up on ever seeing my family again when Mami bursts through the door with Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Bill. I want to run over and give them hugs but I can’t move.
Mami comes to my bed and smooths my messy ponytails with her hands. “Mi niña, mi niña,” she says in her sad voice that is sadder than ever.
“Here, sit down, Rebeca,” says Uncle Bill and brings her a chair from the other side of the room.
As she arranges herself on the chair, I notice Mami has cuts and scratches all over her arms and legs.
“Mami, are you okay?”
“No es nada. That’s just from the broken glass of the car windows. Don’t worry about me, mi niña. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“What about Papi? And Izzie?”
“Papi and Izzie got a few stitches on their heads, but they’re fine. Papi went back to work and he made Izzie return to school.”
“And Baba?”
“Baba is at home. She couldn’t sleep last night. She’s afraid another catastrophe will happen. The doctor gave her pills to calm her nerves.”
“Poor Baba.”
“Don’t worry, mi niña. Please don’t worry.”
Uncle Bill comes up to my bed. “So I hear you broke a leg,” he says. “Or are you pretending? How about if I untie you from this contraption and take you home?” He reaches for the strap and acts like he’s pulling on it.
“No, Uncle Bill, don’t!”
He laughs. “Fooled you, didn’t I?”
Uncle Bill pulls a rolled-up newspaper out of his back pocket.
“Look, you made the front page of the Daily News. Your names are here.”
Uncle Bill shows me Papi’s name (Mr. Alberto Mizrahi) and Mami’s name (Mrs. Rebecca Mizrahi) and my name (Ruth) and my brother’s name (Isaac) and Baba’s name (Mrs. Esther Glinienski). He reads aloud, “All were taken to Brookdale Hospital, where only Ruth was detained for a fractured right leg.”
He smiles. “So what do you think? You’re famous!”
“Yeah, I’m famous,” I say. “Famous for my stupid broken leg.”
Mami gets upset. “Mi niña, don’t let me hear you say the word ‘stupid’ to your uncle Bill. That’s not nice.”
There’s a sharp knock on the door. A very tall man enters. He has bushy eyebrows and big eyeglasses. “Hello, I’m Dr. Friendlich,” he says.
Mami and Aunt Sylvia lower their heads. Not Uncle Bill. He looks the doctor in the eye. “How long are you keeping my niece in the hospital?”
Dr. Friendlich replies curtly, “As long as necessary.”
He taps my leg. I wince and he says to me, “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Then he turns back to Uncle Bill. “She needs surgery. Bad break to the femur.”
Uncle Bill shrugs. “Kids break bones all the time. You’ll fix her up like new, won’t you?”
“I hope so. But in medicine, there are no guarantees, I am sorry to say.”
Dr. Friendlich turns away from Uncle Bill and sniffs around my bed.
I realize there is a big wet circle under me.
Dr. Friendlich smiles and pats my hand. “A little accident, huh, young lady? We’ll get that taken care of right away.” He pokes his head out the door. “Nurse! Come change the sheets.”
The nurse gives me a nasty look as she enters the room.
She tells Dr. Friendlich, “I told her to call me before she needed to go.”
“Give the child another chance. She’s new to this. She’ll do better tomorrow.” Then Dr. Friendlich looks at us, nods, and says, “Good-bye for now.”
The nurse commands Mami, Sylvia, and Bill, “Wait outside.”
The nurse lectures me as she pulls off the wet sheets. “Learn to control yourself, missy. I don’t have time to be changing your sheets all day. Next time you have an accident I’ll let you lie in it and you’ll see what’s good for you.”
I can’t believe that this is all happening. Yesterday I was a normal girl. I went to the bathroom by myself. Today I can’t do anything without the help of a mean nurse.
Resting again on nice clean sheets, I ask her, “Nurse, do you hate me especially? Or do you just hate all kids?”
The nurse stares at me in shock. I wonder what awful thing she will say.
She is quiet for a minute and then she says, “I don’t hate you, missy. I don’t hate all children. I guess I’m just angry at the world. You see, I have a daughter at home who’s been sick since she was born. All I want is to be with my girl and take care of her. But I have to work to support us, and my mother too. Every day I leave my girl with her grandma, who can barely take care of herself, and hope they’ll be okay until I get home. So I’m angry. Understand?”
Something happens to my heart; it cracks like the sugar crust on Mami’s flan, hearing the nurse talk to me that way.
“I understand, Nurse. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. I’ve been mean to you and that wasn’t right. How about if I bring you an ice cream sandwich? Would you like that?”
“Thank you!”
“Okay. And please remember to ring the bell if you need the bedpan.”
“I will, Nurse. I promise.”
“Please call me by my name. It’s Neala. It’s an Irish name. But my family’s been here such a long time we don’t remember a thing about dear old Ireland.”
Poor Neala, who forgot the land where she was born. I wonder if a day will come when I will forget Cuba. I hope not. But it already seems far, far away, and as hard to hold on to as sea spray.
The next morning, Nurse Neala brings in the bedpan and taps my shoulder to wake me up.
“Sorry to rush you, dear, but you need to empty your bladder now, before they take you in for surgery.”
After Neala leaves, two men in green uniforms arrive and wheel me into the operating room. Dr. Friendlich is there, waiting for me.
“Hello, Ruthie,” Dr. Friendlich says. “We’re going to give you anesthesia and you won’t feel a thing.”
“But I don’t like shots!” I wail.
“Just close your eyes. It will be over before you know it.”
When I wake up, I feel funny. I don’t know if the person who has woken is still me. I’m now crammed inside something.
What is it?
A box?
Why can’t I get o
ut?
Is it a coffin? Am I dead?
I can’t be dead. I see Mami wiping tears from her eyes and Papi is pacing back and forth.
I want to cheer them up. “Hi, Mami. Hi, Papi. I’m okay. Let’s go home!”
Mami lays a moist palm on my forehead. “Oh, my little girl!”
Dr. Friendlich knocks on the door and barges in, followed by Neala. He comes straight to my bed and pulls away the sheet that’s spread over me.
“Stop!” I scream. “No!”
I’m afraid there will be nothing to cover my private parts. I place my hands there, one over the other, to cover myself. But what is this dress I’m wearing? What is this heavy white garment that won’t let me move?
“¡Silencio!” Papi says. “Never yell at the doctor, mi hija.”
Papi lifts his chin to gaze up at Dr. Friendlich. “Doctor?”
Dr. Friendlich is so tall he’s used to looking down at everyone. “Yes?”
I can tell Papi is struggling to find the right words. He’s sweating and wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief that Mami has starched and ironed for him.
“Why did you make my daughter into a mummy?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mizrahi,” Dr. Friendlich says. “We had to put your daughter in a body cast. She’s growing. We want to prevent one leg from ending up shorter than the other. We hope it will work.”
A body cast . . . So that’s why both legs are locked away and my tummy and hips are also locked away. The plaster reaches to my chest and around my back.
I’m a mummy but I’m not dead.
“Get her a pillow, Nurse,” Dr. Friendlich says.
Neala lifts my head and tucks the pillow under my neck.
Now I can see my toes. They stick out of the cast, my ten toes. I can’t wiggle them. I can’t move anything except for my head, my shoulders, and my arms. And I have an opening in front and another in back for me to be able to pee and poop. My legs are spread apart and there’s a pole between them like the letter A.
Dr. Friendlich turns to Mami. “The nurse will show you how to use the pole. You’ll be able to turn your daughter on her stomach, so she can sleep. You’ll need to wash her without getting the cast wet. The nurse will show you how to lift her, so she can use the bedpan. Other than that, do not move her.”
